Excel Services Architecture In SharePoint Server 2010

Excel Services is part of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. Excel Services is built on ASP.NET and SharePoint Foundation technologies. Following are the core components in Excel Services:

· Excel Web Access

· Excel Web Services

· User-defined functions (UDFs)

· ECMAScript (JavaScript, JScript)

· Representational State Transfer (REST) service

· Excel Calculation Services

The Excel Web Access, Excel Web Services, UDFs, ECMAScript, the REST service, and Excel Calculation Services components can be divided into two major groups: the components on a front-end server (also known as the "Web front end") and the component on a back-end application server.

An important aspect of Excel Services is that solution developers can use its power programmatically from their applications. These applications can be line-of-business (LOB) products or custom enterprise solutions that an organization develops internally.

From this diagram, you can see that Excel Services via SharePoint (2010 or higher) is easily as powerful as any middleware offering, and Excel's ease of use lends it to being easily integrated into a number of financial, statistical and other apps.